HELP: Neo Geo Candy to MAME

[gargoyle73]

Grrrrrrr, I successfully at one time made a decent MAME cab out of my Neo 29 candy but am now having major issues and could really use any help in troubleshooting.

Basically, I had found a decent old ATI HD2400 card that ran soft15khz relatively well at 800X600, save for some light jerky effects in some games, and no lower res support for stuff like asteroids and lunar lander (which I love)

The vid card finally died, so thought I'd try a different card, so checked compatibility, and found a well priced GeForce 8400 GS and ordered a 'dongle', but get a very foggy picture on the cab at both 800X600 and 640X480

A few questions:

1.  The dongle - it DOESNT require soft 15 to be running on the hard drive, right?  I assume its already programmed into the dongle?  Either way, I didnt get a solid desktop on the arcade monitor

2.  What else should I try to get the current setup working?  Just give up and go back to HD2400 card?

3.  My vid cards seem to run awefully hot, and this is my first PC build, is a 550 W power supply too much?

Thanks guys, any help most appreciated, sorry for my lack of experience:)

Lee

[MonMotha]

The "dongle" for the modern nVidia cards/drivers is just to make the drivers allow low resolutions with scanrates below 15kHz.  Driver hacks (like Soft15k) are still required to actually make it do it on Windows; the drivers will just refuse without the dongle.

800x600 is actually really high res for a classic arcade monitor.  At 15kHz horizontal scanrate, you're running something interlaced at like 48Hz refresh.  I'm amazed this doesn't give you a headache practically instantly.  The tube is also not going to be able to resolve a ton of detail, so it will appear blurry.  I'm amazed this wasn't a problem with your HD2400, too.  640x480 should look OK, but it's still interlaced and will be jumpy with single pixel lines commonly found in computer graphics.

As a note, the stock monitor in the Neo 29 (Hitachi GMK-29FS2 or FS3) is dual res.  You could set it to the 24kHz setting to get somewhat better looking video at higher resolutions, but it'll mostly just reduce flicker - the tube is still limiting you at things like 800x600.  You'd also sacrifice the ability to get authentic low resolutions for most classics, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that, anyway.

Your power supply's CAPACITY is in no way related to how much power your components actually draw (and hence how much heat they have to get rid of) as long as it's big enough to handle the demand of everything.  That card must just run hot by design.  Make sure you've got decent airflow in the area around it.  Airflow means actually air movement in and out of the enclosure - not just air swirling around.

[gargoyle73]

Thank you man!  Very helpful post:)

[gargoyle73]

The "dongle" for the modern nVidia cards/drivers is just to make the drivers allow low resolutions with scanrates below 15kHz.  Driver hacks (like Soft15k) are still required to actually make it do it on Windows; the drivers will just refuse without the dongle.

800x600 is actually really high res for a classic arcade monitor.  At 15kHz horizontal scanrate, you're running something interlaced at like 48Hz refresh.  I'm amazed this doesn't give you a headache practically instantly.  The tube is also not going to be able to resolve a ton of detail, so it will appear blurry.  I'm amazed this wasn't a problem with your HD2400, too.  640x480 should look OK, but it's still interlaced and will be jumpy with single pixel lines commonly found in computer graphics.

As a note, the stock monitor in the Neo 29 (Hitachi GMK-29FS2 or FS3) is dual res.  You could set it to the 24kHz setting to get somewhat better looking video at higher resolutions, but it'll mostly just reduce flicker - the tube is still limiting you at things like 800x600.  You'd also sacrifice the ability to get authentic low resolutions for most classics, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that, anyway.

Your power supply's CAPACITY is in no way related to how much power your components actually draw (and hence how much heat they have to get rid of) as long as it's big enough to handle the demand of everything.  That card must just run hot by design.  Make sure you've got decent airflow in the area around it.  Airflow means actually air movement in and out of the enclosure - not just air swirling around.

MonMotha, you still out there?

My Neo 29 (Hitachi GMK-29FS2 or FS3) dual res monitor, IF i do lower the refresh to the 24kHz, how exactly do I do it?  Is it on the monitor itself?  soft dip?  hard?  a switch?

Also, I would like to have lower resolution for some games (Lunar Lander, Asteroids), whats my best bet?

I DID get a new HD2400, and its working flawlessly as before with soft15, and I was wrong, I am running at 640X480, and yes there is some 'flicker' but its tolerable.  BUT my lowest available resoution is 640X480, do I need to go lower?  If so, how?

THANK YOU!

Lee